In an article announcing the 2016 annual awards longlist, 800-CEO-READ’s Editorial Director Dylan Schleicher, makes an interesting observation about this year’s best business books:

While speed, innovation, big data, and disruption are the business buzzwords of the day, the best books of 2016 argue for a more considered and considerate, human-centered, inclusive, and deliberately constructive approach to business. Change is in the air and technology is on the rise, but business is still a human pursuit, and should be humane. In a media climate dominated by Twitterstorms and sound bites, it is important to dive deeper into the issues and inform ourselves more fully before taking action. These books help do that.

Here is the longlist for the 2016 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards:

LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

The Founder’s Mentality: How to Overcome the Predictable Crises of Growth by Chris Zook & James Allen

Off-Centered Leadership: The Dogfish Head Guide to Motivation, Collaboration and Smart Growth by Sam Calagione

The 16th edition of strategy+business Best Business Books has been made available. Every year strategy+business (s+b) publishes an authoritative, carefully selected list of high quality business books across key business categories. This year’s list covers: Technology, Talent & Leadership, Narratives, Management, Marketing, Strategy, and Economy. It’s hard to make time to read and learn about the best business books available and this list is a source that helps tremendously. Here is s+b’s Top Shelf list, which are their picks for the best business books of 2016 in seven categories.

TechnologyPinpoint: How GPS Is Changing Technology, Culture, and Our Minds, by Greg Milner

Talent and LeadershipLearning Leadership: The Five Fundamentals of Becoming an Exemplary Leader, by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner

NarrativesFamous Nathan: A Family Saga of Coney Island, the American Dream, and the Search for the Perfect Hot Dog , by Lloyd Handwerker and Gil Reavill

Management Pre-Suasion: A Revolutionary Way to Influence and Persuade, by Robert Cialdini

This infographic that was done in 2013 by Oxfam International is a beautiful example of the power of visualization and how imagery can help make complex information easy to understand. As Kate Ryan writes in Good Food:

So whether you’re looking to stock up on anything from orange soda to latte-flavored potato chips, Mondelez, Kraft, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, PepsiCo, P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Mars, Danone, General Mills, Kellogg’s, and Unilever own just about everything you could hope to buy. It seems that six degrees of separation theory has been proven after all, if only because we all drink Diet Coke every now and then…In order to visually elucidate that point, Oxfam International created a comprehensive infographic that reveals the extensive reach of the “Big 10” food and beverage companies.

Open Access (OA) literature is digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions. What makes it possible is the internet and the consent of the author or copyright-holder. OA is entirely compatible with peer review, and all the major OA initiatives for scientific and scholarly literature insist on its importance. Just as authors of journal articles donate their labor, so do most journal editors and referees participating in peer review. OA literature is not free to produce, even if it is less expensive to produce than conventionally published literature. The question is not whether scholarly literature can be made costless, but whether there are better ways to pay the bills than by charging readers and creating access barriers. Business models for paying the bills depend on how OA is delivered. – Peter Suber

Virginia Woolf’s classic essay, A Room of One’s Own, was written in 1929 and explores, in regards to woman and fiction, the opinion that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. A woman at that time, due to social restrictions, had limited resources, space, privacy and time, all of which are needed to create and write fiction.

Fast-forward to today and a variation on the theme of independence can be explored that pertains to both men and women and includes the world of business. It is about creating an environment that allows for intellectual freedom. One way for business professionals and others who wish to grow creatively and intellectually outside their places of work, is to start businesses of their own.

Starting a business today is vastly different than starting one in the past. The main reason for this is due to, thanks to technology and innovation, the development of open access resources and tools. Starting and running a business in the past required a great deal of investment. Now, the availability of open access resources offer not only high quality, but economical options and opportunities as well.

Here are just a few examples of open access resources and tools and their uses. There are many, many more available:

Marketing/Communications – blogging sites such as WordPress and Medium

Marketing/Design – Canva allows you to design and create professional presentations, flyers, documents, infographics, and more

Business and Market Research – SEC filings, Google Trends, Owler, SimilarWeb, Kompass. Emergence of government data combined with analytics

Accounting – GnuCash, Wave

Virtual Meetings – JoinMe, Google Hangouts, AnyMeeting

Today, it truly is possible to create a personal environment to freely pursue intellectual endeavors. Lucky for us that we live in a time where high quality open access tools and resources are readily available.

It comes as no surprise to the average college student that free textbook usage is increasing and will more than likely continue to increase at a speedy clip given the high cost of today’s textbooks.

According to a Rice University news release, more than 1.5 million college students have used a free textbook from OpenStax, the university-based publisher. “The number of students using OpenStax textbooks has more than doubled since January, and OpenStax estimates it will save students $70 million in the 2016-17 academic year…More than 811,000 students are using [OpenStax] books this fall, which is a 106 percent increase over spring 2016, and the books are being used in over 4,500 courses at 2,688 universities, colleges and high schools.”

Banned Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Association, is an important event that is held every year. It raises awareness, and does not let us forget, that censorship is unfortunately alive and well.

Click here to read yearly lists of banned and challenged books (at the bottom of the page). You will be surprised at some of the titles included on the lists.